The company isn’t a household name. It’s a privately held British petrochemicals company – it has been HQ’d in Switzerland but moved back to the UK in 2017 – and started from a buyout of the chemicals business of oil major BP and it’s made owner Jim Ratcliffe a billionaire who has recently quit the UK for Monaco. The company recently bought Lausanne FC, a football club in Switzerland, and Belstaff, a brand of motorcycle clothing – that’s the leisure wear sorted – and sponsors a team in the Americas Cup sailing race. Unless you’re in the market for a tanker of vinyl acetate you’re unlikely to be a consumer of Ineos products, unlike, say Soudal adhesives, a Sky subscription or Groupama home insurance but the company can sponsor to get public goodwill much like Orica tried, and it’s also for internal management reasons, the firm can have offsite management lectures from Dave Brailsford, staff can attend pro races and… well if you were a billionaire you might just fancy owning a bike team.

Now from big budgets to sudden shortfalls. L’Equipe has a full article on Ag2r La Mondiale’s bike problems behind the paywall. You might remember the switch from Factor to Merckx, the paper says Factor couldn’t meet it’s “financial commitments” (my translation) and so the contract was broken. This left the team looking for a bike supplier late last year and they only did the deal with Merckx in November. Only this didn’t solve things, it set off a chain reaction, first the Merckx frames proved too flexible so they’re really riding Ridley frames (NB: Ridley owns Merckx). Originally they had Campagnolo parts in a deal with Merckx but the team also has Rotor and Mavic as sponsors and the Italian shifters didn’t work with the Rotor chainrings… so they’re on Shimano. They’re also sponsored by Vredestein but as L’Equipe reports the riders don’t like them in the wet so they’re using Continental tires.

Tramadol is banned in competition now which is good news, Paris-Nice marked the first race where the new tests happened. Corticosteroid abuse is next on the list but it’s proving harder. The UCI wants to take a cue from the MPCC’s cortisol health checks but the MPCC is a voluntary, self-regulating body where teams can leave, and some have withdrawn in the Saint Augustine “give me chastity, just not today” manner. The UCI however needs to have a more watertight system which is not elective and controlling for cortisol levels is harder so it’s going to take more time.

Staying with anti-doping for a moment, the Operation Aderlass hasn’t caught any more cyclists beyond Stefan Denifl and Georg Preidler. The two skiers caught have spoken to the Austrian media and knowing their time in sport is up, one says he wants to become a doctor and the other a policeman. Perhaps not. More fundamentally it also emerged that the blood samples stored included some in a deep freeze, kept at -82°C which means the pouches could be held in reserve for years. The police are now checking the codenames and will do DNA checks against the bags seized in Erfurt Germany. Awkwardly the final stage of the Deutschland Tour this year will finish in Erfurt.

Looking further ahead than this summer, the 2024 Worlds have gone to Zürich, Switzerland. Here’s the list of venues selected already:

2019 Yorkshire, Great Britain

2020 Aigle-Martigny, Switzerland

2021 Flanders, Belgium

2022 Wollongong, Australia

2023 Glasgow, Great Britain

2024 Zürich, Switzerland

2025 hasn’t been decided with UCI likely to chose later this year between Rwanda and Morocco and Gabon as the outsider. The UK and Switzerland each get two Worlds but it’s not quite a story of each country having two bites of the cake. Aigle only happened after the Italian bid to host the Worlds fell through so it was encouraged to bid and the stated hosting fee of CHF 6.3 million is below the going rate in the past. Glasgow is the special worlds that’ll host track, MTB and more all together and in both cases they’re not really national bids but local, regional ones. It’s a long way out but the Zürich course has already been unveiled, it looks like a punchy course with over 4,000m of vertical gain.

Lastly Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico clash and it can look odd that two World Tour races overlap, a problem the sport ought to solve. But the prime audience for each race is domestic so they can exist in their own bubbles without disturbing the other which explains why the pressure isn’t that big, ASO and RCS could change the calendar with an email or two if they wanted. Also each race has a field of 161 riders so 322 riders in total but there are over 500 World Tour riders alone and more from the Pro Conti invitees as well. Put this way we need two races as they offer a contest in themselves and also preparation ahead of the classics. But it’s too much to do daily previews for both…

The Ineos Automotive ”Projekt Grenadier” looks Quite Interesting and maybe a good fit for existing Sky fans. Perhaps Froome will be starring in ads for a new 4×4 vehicle in 2025 while Wiggins struggles to keep up in his Skoda Kodiaq?

Wasn’t Sir Jim Ratcliffe the chap that reportedly bid to buy Chelsea FC?
It would appear that the new owner may well maintain a very healthy team budget.
It’ll be interesting to see how this situation develops.

He’s got the right ethics for cycling:
UK’s richest man moves to Monaco to ‘save £4bn in tax’
Britain’s richest man, the Brexit supporter Sir Jim Ratcliffe, and two of his key lieutenants at chemicals firm Ineos have reportedly been planning to save up to £4bn in tax after moving to Monaco.
Ratcliffe, who has lobbied to weaken green taxes and reduce restrictions on fracking, owns 60% of Ineos.

i feel for AG2R, those sorts of background issues can be so time consuming for staff and frustrating for riders. parts are parts to a certain extent, but when all else is dialed in for the season , a haphazard bike is just an unnecessary stressor.

i wonder what went on for all that to happen, especially the Campagnolo details. are they obligated to Rotor and thus had to abandon Campag for Shiamno? probably so, new cranks are less expensive than new group sets. how unfortunate for a team that already feels a little rickety at the joints.

Yes for the obligation to Rotor. Other teams are similar, think EF Education First and Astana, only a not all teams have total Shimano, SRAM or Campagnolo sponsorship where they get paid to ride the kit, and the whole lot from the groupset to wheels and components like stems.

A friend of mind sent my a link to the secret pro’s article where he reveals that many pro riders can be found riding/wearing their preferred bike/clothing/tyres. Looks like AGR2 just can’t be bothered to hide their contempt for their sponsors to the off-season…..
Still, the feedback could be useful.
INEOS still look a better prospect that Bahrain or UAE. Just waiting for the moment that Bolivia and North Korea start sponsoring bike teams.

There used to be more of this, Boonen on a custom frame rather than his team issue Specialized, Rui Costa’s shoes etc but it stopped years ago and brands have clamped down on this more and it’s been rider by rider, here it’s been team policy all of a sudden.

With regard to custom parts, last wednesday the Extra Time Koers cycling talkshow on Sporza was interesting. One of the guests was Jan Willem van Schip, rider at Roompot-Charles and current track points race world champion. Van Schip has an awkward position on the bike, where he rides with his wrists turned to the inside.
He told how he got the idea this position should be more aeroynamic, but he had to get special handlebars for this position. Initialy he rode with the custom bars used by Leontien van Moorsel for her hour attempt.
After Roompot the switch of Roompot from Isaac to Factor bikes he wanted to maintain the position he tested, so he calculated the dimensions he needed for a custom stem.
It just shows that some riders still have demand for custom set-ups regardless. If the sponsor can’t supply, they just mark out the name of the maker and may or may not sticker it with the name of the sponsor.
Link to the show (in Dutch): https://sporza.be/nl/2019/03/13/bekijk-extra-time-koers-van-13-maart/

I’ve long felt that Brailsford is probably the most likely manager to snag a blue-chip corporate – he talks and acts the same way the people who write the cheques do. On one hand it’s good to see big company money coming into cycling (as it may pave the way for others) but at the same time it feels like another sugar daddy pet project, a band aid while cycling limps along without a sustainable solution.

And somehow you expected something different? Perhaps Dave just couldn’t convince “Mission Winnow” that pro cycling really was a good place for them?
“Save the Whales”….poison the whales…it’s all the same when you get to the bank.

Note your comments about the difficulty doing daily previews for two concurrent stage races. Out of interest, you always seem to pick Paris Nice, INRNG. Is that just a personal preference or do you scan the start lists before deciding?